Natural Selection Drives Evolutionary Adaptation

Steps:

• Natural selection acts on variations in populations, favoring traits that improve survival and reproduction.
• Better adapted individuals have higher fitness, increasing their chances of surviving environmental pressures.
• These survivors reproduce, passing advantageous genetic traits to offspring via inheritance.
• Over generations, this shifts population traits, leading to evolution.

Why D is correct:

• Darwin's theory of natural selection defines adaptation as increased survival and reproductive success, with heritable traits propagating changes in populations.

Why the others are wrong:

• A denies both core mechanisms of survival advantage and inheritance, contradicting natural selection basics.
• B affirms survival but denies trait transfer to offspring, ignoring genetic inheritance in evolution.
• C affirms inheritance but denies survival advantage, overlooking differential reproduction essential to selection.

Final answer: D